the secret you don't know how to tell
by ulstergirl
Summary: The CIA orders Chuck and Sarah to move in together after Season 2. Chuck x Sarah.
1. the secret you don't know how to tell

**spoilers for everything through the end of season 2. written for oxoniensis's porn battle; prompts were: toothache, practicing. if you're of age, you can find the full nc-17 version over at livejournal, where my username is ndnickerson. content warning: language, sexual situations.**

--

"'You're so sweet you give me a toothache'?" Casey held an ice pack to his jaw, scowling.

"Hey, it's a time-honored pickup line. So cool because it's old-school." Chuck bumped his shoulder against Sarah's, as Sarah tried, mostly successfully, to hold in a snort.

"You sure that thing's working?" Casey swung over with his deceptively lazy gait and thumped Chuck hard on the temple, sending Chuck tripping into Sarah, his arm brushing her breast. She was in a tight dress made of sage-green silk, her back bare.

He kind of wished more of their missions required her to dress as a bellhop. Or a nun. Nun would be good.

"You mean since I've always been so good at the scissor-kicks?"

Casey rolled his eyes in response. "Besides, what are you two doing here? I'm fine." He pulled the ice pack away from his jaw, sweeping his arms.

And Chuck slowed to a stop in front of the fountain just outside Ellie and Awesome's place, the place that was not actually his anymore. When Chuck got tired, or lonely, or just wanted to sleep on a bed instead of the couch, he swung by and climbed through his old window and crashed on what was now the guest bed, and Ellie didn't say anything because she looked at him with those sympathetic brown eyes, thinking he and Sarah were having a fight.

And Chuck always remembered earplugs, especially after that second time he'd snuck in and, well, he doesn't think about what he heard.

He'd never pegged Devon as being into cosplay, although it somehow made sense.

Casey was staring at Chuck like he'd finally lost his mind. "Did you flash?" he said gruffly, tentatively.

"No, no. Just… well, yes. Something about Batman."

Casey threw his icepack directly at Chuck's head. Chuck caught it without looking.

"Go home, you two."

Ahh. The problem. The reason Chuck prayed for nun costumes and missions that didn't involve Sarah being unable to wear a bra.

The CIA, in its infinite wisdom, had decided that now, since Chuck was far more capable than he'd ever been of defending himself, he needed round-the-clock protection.

By moving in with his cover girlfriend.

Who was a) definitely not a nun and b) far too comfortable lounging around their apartment in a t-shirt and panties.

He'd had a nightmare last week that she was a double agent, sent to drive him crazy.

So far, that plan was definitely working.

--

"He's right, you know."

Chuck turned in his seat to look at Sarah, who was driving. Sarah _always _drove. So what if he responded to danger with the occasional bout of fleeting panic? It didn't mean he couldn't drive.

"How come I never—"

"Casey may not be the—"

They stopped and Chuck held her gaze for a second before she turned back to face the road. "I guess the Intersect upload didn't include seduction school."

"Well, it was meant for Bryce. They were sure _he_ didn't need it." Chuck picked at a loose thread, stretching his legs. Her car had no leg room. Nothing had leg room.

When they were in the apartment together there was no air. He had to grin and act comfortable for the cameras and Ellie while inside he was trying not to come out of his skin.

They were going to slip. They both knew it. It was only a question of when.

"Besides, I seem to remember that when Roan was giving me his crash course on the female psyche, you said I was charming."

"And you are." She ducked her head, one strand of her hair falling loose from her twist, brushing her cheek. "_Chuck_ is. _Carmichael_, though… it's like everything fits, but that."

"And we need to work on that." He said it with absolutely no tone in his voice, his mouth dry.

She shrugged a little. "We've got time tonight."

He didn't look at her breasts, that all too flimsy silk, because that would have been cheating.

--

He had to give it to Sarah; she didn't do things halfway. She pushed the couch out of the way, shoved the chairs behind the table, and left a wide square on the floor for them. And changed into a faded black dress that managed to drape or cling in all the right places.

She crossed her legs. He lost the bet with himself that she'd opted for the royal-blue-lime-green striped boyshorts.

"Really? I wish I'd seen that."

"No, no you don't." He chuckled a little, his hands clasped nervously between his knees. His shirt was half unbuttoned, untucked, his shoes kicked off beside the door. She had turned one lamp on, and her makeup had softened, leaving her looking a little less invincible.

"If you'd come to me I'd have taught you to lead."

"No you wouldn't've, you would've raised your eyebrow and said _'Casey said what?_'" His voice rose as he falsettoed to mimic her voice, and she covered her mouth, her eyes dancing. "And then I would've felt like an idiot but then at least I wouldn't have had Awesome _grabbing my ass _while he was dressed in a towel. In a _towel_, Sarah."

By the end of it she was doubled over, laughing. The one thing he had learned was how to make her laugh. When they had first moved in together she had been just as afraid of what was going to happen between them.

She still was. And he still was, really, when he was honest with himself. If Morgan hadn't stolen that condom, at least now he wouldn't be dreaming about what could've happened five nights a week.

"So Casey flunked out of seduction school. I'm guessing you passed on your first try."

She gave him that faint smile that wasn't quite a confirmation. "It's easier for girls," she said apologetically. "Wear something low-cut, bat your eyelashes, there you are."

He scoffed. "Seems like you had to work a little harder on it with Cole."

"Cole's guard was up." Sarah shifted her crossed legs and hooked a finger just inside the low neckline of her dress, traced it back up to her shoulder and down again. Her eyes didn't flicker.

Chuck's definitely did.

"So Roan was right? Make sure all the attention in the room is on me, take charge, be a bastard if I have to?"

"Depends on the girl."

"What if the girl is you?"

She let her hand drop back to her lap. "One of the best ways to get a woman's attention is to be a great dancer."

"So you're saying I could've avoided having a knife thrown at my nads in La Ciudad's hotel room if I'd just kept my incredibly lame tango skills to myself."

He earned a smile for that one. "Want me to teach you to tango, Chuck?" She stood, the hem of her dress falling a good few inches above her knee, barefoot. In that moment he could sure as hell believe that another half-inch of cleavage and the bat of her black lashes was all it would take.

"Not the tango," he found himself saying. "The lambada."

Chuck didn't bother getting to his feet. He just watched her, carefully, to see if her gaze dropped, to see if she gave that little shake of the shoulders before breezily informing him that it was no problem at all.

Chuck had never been able to actually taste jealousy before, not until he had seen Sarah dancing with Bryce, her hips rolling against his, his hands all over her. _All_ over her.

And Bryce was gone now, and Chuck had the feeling that the moment he had put his palm against that panel in the white room where Bryce had died, he had agreed to be, if not Bryce, then the next closest thing.

That was what he dreamed about, when it wasn't coming back to the apartment to find Sarah dressed in fishnets and heels and nothing else. He dreamed about Bryce slumped against a white wall, incredibly disappointed that Chuck hadn't granted his dying wish. To destroy the new Intersect. To go on and have a normal life.

This was not a normal life. Not by a long shot.

"You sure you can handle it?" Her eyes had that distant look, the one that meant she was being someone else, not who she was but the person she thought she was supposed to be. The place where Sarah Walker and whoever Jenny Burton had been didn't overlap anymore.

"Can you?"

"Try me."

--

She cued it up on his iPod. "The main thing about this is that you have to trust me."

"Sure it's not the other way around?"

"Eventually." Sarah sauntered up to him. "This is practice."

Which meant _this is fake._

Chuck was almost able to use learning the dance to distract himself, save for that one thing, the fact his brain kept reminding him about, approximately five times a second. Her _hips_ were against his. Her _hips._

He almost said, right there, that he'd tell her anything she wanted to hear, because nothing was worth denying himself this. He didn't care if the North Koreans or if Skynet or if zombie robot Hitler had sent her.

Except it was worse because no one sent her, and this was all supposed to be just another day in his life. Another agonizing hour of blue balls and a thousand thoughts he couldn't act on.

"Lower, Chuck." She repositioned his hand on her ass.

And Chuck clamped his mouth shut, his ears turning faintly red. _A beautiful woman puts your hand on her ass, that means she wants you._

Even the increasingly intrusive Intersect wasn't enough to help him now.

"Sarah," he began to stammer out. Their hips were snug. Her face was glistening. Her eyes an inch from his.

"Dip me."

He did, just a beat too long, his hips rubbing against the join of her thighs, catching on the hem of her dress so that only his clothes and her panties were between them.

"Chuck, you're too stiff. You have to relax."

Chuck's mouth fell open and he just gazed at her in speechless shock, until she gave that one specific tilt of her head, the one that meant _we're on camera_, and put her hands on his hips.

"You have to just go with it, or it'll never come."

She twirled back into his arms, and he had her tight, and the music kept going but she didn't. She let her head fall back and brought it up slowly, her cheeks flushed, her skirt hiked up and her hips angled against his.

The forbidden dance.

Their forbidden dance.

He backed her up against the back of the couch, her legs already so loose that they parted to straddle his hips. He held his mouth the width of a breath from hers, and deliberately, without dropping her gaze, ran his nails down the line of her spine, cupping her ass to pull her harder against him.

_We may be on camera but I don't care._

He held it just a beat too long and when he released her she was panting, her eyes hazed and low-lidded.

By the time she could say his name he was already gone.

--

She had promised that the apartment would have two bedrooms, but then the economy crashed and CIA was looking for ways to cut corners and, well, they could figure something out.

Except that 'figuring something out,' more often than not, meant he was sleeping on the couch, because Chuck had woken up more than once a split second from yanking her damn panties off and finding out if that morning in the motel in Barstow had just been a fluke.

He'd always wanted to be living with Sarah. Just not in a way that meant touching her would serve as irrefutable proof that their relationship had finally compromised her as his handler.

There were no cameras in the bedroom, but they both knew there might as well have been.

He was sitting on the bed when she walked in, the music still on in the other room, her face half in shadow. She pulled her dress off and stood before him naked save an incredibly brief pair of lavender lace panties.

"S—"

The rest of it was swallowed in her, her mouth suddenly on his, his hands coming up to trace every inch of her bare skin. He half-rose and she shoved him backward, and then she was straddling him, rubbing her hips deliberately against him.

She leaned down and sucked his earlobe, her breath catching when he cupped her bare breasts.

"If you talk, it's over."

She said it so faintly, but he had never expected anything else. Not really.

She slid her hand between them, and then just like that morning, she was climbing off him, heading for the bathroom. When she came back in he stopped unbuttoning his shirt, transfixed by the sight of her bare breasts, the reddened welcoming pout of her mouth. She slid in beside him, on her knees, still in those damn lace panties, and ripped open the condom wrapper. But she made no move to put it on him, just held his gaze, unable to even mouthe anything.

If he was another spy, _really_ another spy, there would be no question. This would just be burning off energy after a mission, meaningless, another way to push back the growing certainty that life was an endless series of suitcases and hotel rooms and nights spent wondering if the next bullet was going to be the last.

And no matter what else, Chuck wasn't Bryce. Chuck wasn't a spy. He was just the one who'd happened to be there, just then, who made the choice that if this was the only way, if he could do what was right and keep Sarah safe, then that was all he could do.

And this, for all those reasons, this would _mean_ something.

He led her hand to him, closing his eyes as she slid the condom on.

--

"I see now why it's forbidden."

Her eyes were too wide, but she smiled, a little crookedly, her legs still loose and open, naked under him, and Chuck still fully dressed, his shirt slid halfway down his shoulders, still on its last button.

"Yeah," she agreed, cupping her hand over his, still holding his gaze.

By the time Chuck drifted off to sleep, he realized his iPod had shuffled to Arcade Fire, and Sarah, still naked and cuddled to him, was holding his palm flat against her belly.

Thank God the CIA had been too cheap to shell out for a two-bedroom.


	2. revisionist history

**written for oxoniensis's porn battle, prompt: homecoming. if you're of age, you can find the full nc-17 version of this story at livejournal, where my username is ndnickerson. content warning: sexual situations.**

--

It's Chuck's first Christmas without Morgan, and it's really getting to him. Sarah knows this because Chuck will do patently stupid things like turn to Casey while the three of them are on a stakeout and say something like "Remember when he was roleplaying with you and asking where the Ramones were?" and Casey just grunts and caresses the handle of his piece like he wants to splatter Chuck's internal organs all over the digital voice transponder. Which he probably does. Casey is many things (_burnout, hothead, mercenary_), but subtle is not one of them.

"It's gonna be okay." Sarah pats Chuck's back as they trudge up the stairs to their apartment.

"It's just... you know, I feel like _this_," and Chuck waves his hands, "just kept getting in the way, he wanted to hang out but there were always missions, and then he was _gone_, and do you know, he's come over for Christmas every year since we were eight?" Chuck kicks his shoes off as soon as Sarah has closed the door behind them. "We had a stocking for him. Ellie still has it. We give him Lego Star Wars figures and licorice." Chuck sighs and drops heavily onto the couch, unclipping his gun. She's a little surprised. He hates the gun so much that usually he has it unclipped, safety on, and holstered on the kitchen counter before she even has the door deadbolted.

Except there was that time last month when Ring agents were waiting for them here, and as for her, well, she only unholsters her knives when she goes to sleep.

Most of the time, anyway.

Sarah pours Chuck a soda and soon he has his feet up on the coffee table, watching some news report about next year's big-ticket video game franchise releases, but his expression never entirely clears.

Chuck was right. Sarah has never has a friend like he has Morgan. And despite what he says, Chuck doesn't count, because she's damn sure Chuck never picked out lingerie for Morgan. Not willingly, at least. And, despite Sarah's generally sour feelings about holidays in general and Christmas especially, the Bartowski enthusiasm is hard to dampen. For God's sake, they even have a Twilight Zone drinking game. Last year Ellie had been blitzed by seven o'clock and was slurringly insistent that Morgan put on an elf cap and dance a jig. For the rest of the night, until she had tilted drunkenly but quite happily into Devon's arms to be carted off to bed, she had called him her little leprechaun, and Chuck had snorted, and Morgan had just nodded very seriously and teased Ellie about a pot of gold and misplacing his lucky charms.

Thankfully Devon had confiscated Ellie's car keys before she could fixate on the idea of marshmallow-sprinkled cereal and stagger drunkenly into the parking lot in search of a box.

Chuck isn't the best spy in the world, and that's why Sarah (damn it) loves him. He's not ruthless. He gets quiet and introspective and very serious in the rare event that he actually has to fire the gun Casey spent so many exasperated hours teaching him to use. He cracks jokes in her ear when they're separated on missions, still has two left feet, and, under pressure, he tends to babble exactly what's on his mind. The new Intersect has only complicated things, and the old Intersect just robbed him of time he could have spent with a friend.

And Bryce is dead so Sarah's the one who ends up feeling somehow responsible.

Besides, she kind of misses Morgan too. Chuck was actually himself when he was with Morgan, and without him, and with his sister married, living with her in this CIA-financed apartment, she's not sure if even he knows who he is anymore.

"Hey," she says, tipping forward, resting her elbows on the counter, and Chuck turns to look at her. That slow little melt she's felt since the first time their eyes met is still there, but she'll never be used to it. "Let's just get out and do something today. Casey says we're free."

"We're never free." Chuck quirks a half-smile at her. "What'd you have in mind?"

--

She wears a flippy little skirt, the kind favored by carhops and cheerleaders, and long knee socks, and at the rental window she opts for black speed skates. "Should've known," Chuck groans good-naturedly, forking over the cash for their rentals.

Even though it's Christmas Eve, the rink is still popular. Teenaged girls giggle and roll their eyes at the old-fashioned music, toddlers whine as they clomp on their bright plastic skates, and the concessions stand smells like watery mint-flavored hot chocolate. As Sarah tucks her purse into a locker she sees a woman leave her own purse unattended, struggling to get her little boy's foot into his skate, and thinks about her own dad. Everyone's too trusting. And she could pickpocket that woman in two seconds flat. Instead, she keeps an eye on the woman until she has her purse tucked safely under her arm again, and then Chuck is lacing his fingers around Sarah's, and if Sarah's father could see him now, "schmoop" would be too good for him.

Sarah takes Chuck's other hand and skates backward, trusting him to keep her from crashing into someone. He shakes his head a few times, then smiles. Apparently the new Intersect didn't come with skating techniques, either. That, or he doesn't have the adrenaline rush his flashes sometimes require.

"Thanks."

She gives him a little shrug. "Nothing says Christmas like whiny toddlers and rented shoes, right?"

"And you said you weren't funny," he deadpans, gently guiding her so she'll know when to turn, effortlessly moving her around a pair of crashed teenage boys. "No, I mean it. It's just... everything's different this year. And it would be great if he was here."

"I know." She squeezes his hands. The DJ announces a couples skate and turns on the disco ball, and Bing Crosby starts singing "White Christmas," and Sarah can only see Chuck's face when the reflection glances over it.

"Hey, Sarah?"

"Hmm?"

"When... when you were little, growing up, did you ever see a white Christmas? Wake up and there was snow on the ground?"

He grew up in southern California, so to him it's just a miracle; Sarah knows that waking up Christmas morning to snow outside can mean a miserable day spent shivering because Dad didn't have the money to keep the heat turned on.

"Yeah," she says, and tips forward to kiss him. And then he stumbles a little and her skate catches on the half-wall and they end up tangled, with her pinned under him, the breath knocked out of her.

"Sorry," Chuck says, but there's a smile in his voice.

That's another thing she (damn it) loves, that even after so long, the lightest kiss can still turn him weak-kneed.

--

The traffic snarls the interstate, like she knew it would, and they have to get back in time to make it to Ellie's for dinner. Sarah's tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, impatiently pumping the brakes, when she feels a breeze over her inner thighs. She glances down in time to see her skirt flip down, and Chuck's gazing innocently through the windshield, twiddling his thumbs.

"Chuck?" Her tone is dangerous.

"I was just... settling a bet."

"A bet with who?"

"Uh... myself."

"About whether I was wearing underwear?"

"Not really. Not exactly."

"What, then?"

He's not looking at her. "Uh, which pair it was."

Sarah shakes her head. "Boys," she mutters, aggressively switching lanes just in time to see that one sputter to a stop. Of course.

"You seem tense."

"Really," she replies, but most of the annoyance in her tone is for show. Chuck very rarely makes the first move, when it comes to their very careful, very... quiet sex life. Just something else he can never acknowledge, that she can never acknowledge, even though she's seen the way his eyes burn with jealousy when she has to pick up a mark on a mission, and seeing it always turns her on, just a little. Bryce had always been too professional to be jealous, and when he was, it never lasted long.

And then she feels Chuck's hand sliding up her thigh. "What—"

"Just trying to help you relax," he says, with the bland innocence of a devil. His nails are short but when he drags them over the cotton of her panties, her toes curl, her every nerve going sensitive and brilliant.

"You okay?" He's always so concerned about her. It would be insulting if he were anyone else, but that's just the way he is.

"Never better."

She arches in her seat, her vision swimming. The next time he drives, she knows the statistics but to hell with it, she's going to return this favor.

If she ever let him drive. Which she doesn't.

But this might just be enough incentive.

"Feeling more relaxed?"

"No," she croaks out, bracing her shoulders against the back of her seat. "Not really."

"That's a shame. Did you know, I always wanted a white Christmas," he says, a little wistfully, and her mouth falls open, her hips just barely rocking against his touch. "Snow men, snow cream, snow angels. An actual reason to wear something heavier than a t-shirt." His fingers are shifting, and she sucks in a hard breath. "We used to watch A Christmas Story, and it wasn't the official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle, it was the snow I wanted. It made everyone happy."

She twists her hips in the seat, realizing that the car in front of her has started moving only when she hears the horn of the car behind theirs, arching to give Chuck a better angle. She hits the gas too hard, stomps the brake, panting out his name. Her shoulders jerk and she bears down against him.

"It doesn't," she gasps out. "It just hides everything, oh God don't stop, please don't stop, Chuck, please don't stop."

"Yeah," he agrees, and he's leaning over the seat, gently catching her earlobe in his teeth. "Come for me, Sarah, come, I want to feel it," he whispers, and she lets out a sob as she does. She shifts into the high-speed lane, her thumb circling the knob of the gearshift. She would return the favor but she's having enough trouble concentrating as it is.

"Yeah, I think I'm relaxed now," she murmurs.

--

They're ten minutes late because they had to shower once they got back to the apartment, and, well, they've been living together for six months, sleeping together for five and a half, and she's beginning to think that if the Agency doesn't know it by now, they don't deserve her. So she lets herself quietly moan his name, her back against the cold tile, his brown-eyed gaze steady and dancing as he holds her own.

And that's okay, because she still thinks it's kind of hilarious that Chuck shuffles his feet a little as they wait for Ellie and Awesome to answer his knock. It's their _cover_, for God's sake, it's okay, everyone on Earth is supposed to think they're sleeping together.

Even though nothing has been less a cover in her life.

And Awesome opens the door because Ellie is sitting with Morgan on the couch, and Chuck's eyes, his entire face lights up at the sight of him. They hug and babble and Morgan's beaming, almost shaking with excitement.

Twilight Zone is on. The shot glasses are already out. Awesome pats Sarah on the back after their only slightly awkward greeting hug.

"Looking good tonight, future sister-in-law."

And that's cover too. She only has the energy for one Christmas miracle this year, and he's on the couch, sandwiched between Ellie and Chuck, using complicated hand motions to describe the proper way to toss knives.

And Morgan's the reason that Casey didn't break open a door at a Barstow motel just to find her having sex with Chuck, she figured out, when she found his crumpled IOU on the bathroom floor right after Chuck left for more condoms.

God, she would never have lived that down.

When Morgan gives Sarah a hug and gazes up at her, saying _Tell the truth, tell me you've been taking care of Chuck_, she just nods and smiles at him. That's the whole reason he's here. And when she says that she missed him too, she isn't lying. She likes who Chuck is with Morgan, and Morgan has always been supportive of their fake/real/cover relationship.

Except that one damn IOU, the one Chuck cursed a hundred times as he pulled his pants on and found his shoes, in that motel room.

The IOU she keeps tucked in her own wallet, now, like some bizarre souvenir.

The next episode is the one with the little boy and the cornfield, and that puts the three of them over, since they'd started before Chuck and Sarah arrived. Sarah goes to the kitchen for another bottle of rum and feels Chuck's hand at the small of her back, just as she notices the mistletoe above the kitchen sink.

"Sarah, thanks, thank you so much, I mean it," he says, and he's so earnest that she feels uncomfortable and wants to laugh it off, but instead she smiles and stands up on her tiptoes and lets her mouth fall open, just that little bit. It's like child's play.

Except that when he kisses her, it's _him_, not just another lie they have to sell, and she melts against him, the rum bottle clenched tight in her fist, feeling a little self-conscious, achingly aware of him.

"Thanks," he murmurs into her mouth, lingering until Awesome's appreciative calls draw them reluctantly apart.

And as she stands alone in the kitchen she realizes that she would undo it all, if it meant this life could be hers.


	3. to keep the sky from falling

**written for oxoniensis's porn battle, prompts: wedding, watching, charm-bracelet. if you're of age, you can find the full nc-17 version of this story at livejournal, where my username is ndnickerson. content warning: language, sexual situations.**

--

Sarah very gently slides her key into the lock and turns it, twisting the doorknob by slow degrees, but the television's still on and the blue glow reflects off the case of Chuck's laptop, and his gaze is locked on her when she glances at his face. _Fuck_, she thinks, closing the door behind her.

It's very hard to successfully sneak around Chuck. She woke one morning just in time to see him go from a dead sleep to sitting bolt upright in bed, holding her service weapon, the laser pointer right in the center of Casey's forehead, Casey's mouth slightly open in awed surprise. His eyes were even still bleary from sleep. The second Intersect isn't perfect, not by a long shot, but now a flea can't sneak up without Chuck hearing it.

She shoots him a tentative smile, one he doesn't return, and her heart sinks.

"How did it go?"

His thumb taps hard on the trackpad a few times, and he keeps his gaze on the screen as he shrugs. "Oh, you know. Ellie's worried about you. She says she never sees you anymore and, y'know, she's right." He snorts, shakes his head, and his jaw is set.

"Chuck—"

"I can help. For God's sake, it was the whole reason I did this," Chuck bursts out, snapping the laptop's lid shut, gesturing at his head.

"You can't. You know you can't. You're too important."

"How, exactly?" Chuck asks, crossing his arms. "They can't reverse-engineer one by taking my brain apart."

Sarah tosses her purse onto the dining room table and shrugs out of her leather jacket, clenching and unclenching her fists. She has too much adrenaline to burn off, to get through this without hitting a landmine. "That doesn't mean they won't try."

Chuck's lips tighten. "Leave my father out of this."

Ahh, there. There. She sees what she's been in denial about since this whole thing started. "That's not my choice, Chuck, and if he can help—"

"I don't care. He's my father."

There is no sympathy or compromise or pleading in his face, in his voice. This is final. And he's trying to use what he has, to somehow get the leverage, to find some control, but she knows where this road leads, where it's been leading since the first night she spent naked in his arms.

"And he's Orion." Sarah crosses her arms and tries to keep the lilting note out of her voice, but she can't.

And she's crossed the line, fully now.

Chuck stabs the power button on the remote and vanishes into their bedroom, closing the door behind him, but he doesn't slam it. She wouldn't have been able to take it, anyway. She sighs and goes to the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of water and downing the whole thing before she finds the will to stumble through their dark room, brush her teeth, and curl up on the other side of the bed, with him hugging his edge, every tense line of his body language telling her that she's far from forgiven.

Just before she drifts off to something that's not quite sleep, she hears him whisper something, so quietly that it's almost to himself.

"Alaina. They're going to name her Alaina."

--

Two weeks after Chuck had uploaded the second Intersect, or, as he called it, "The Intersect plus Matrix expansion pack," General Beckman had, in a briefing meant only for Sarah and Casey, explained that, due to past volatility in the Intersect project, the Agency had had the foresight to have a duplicate Intersect cube and setup produced, only to have major elements stolen soon after Chuck's entirely unsanctioned upload.

That was bad, in itself, and in the months since, while Chuck had been allowed to come along on some of the minor missions, General Beckman drew the line at letting Bartowski anywhere near the backup Intersect cube, the interface, any of it. Security protocols had dictated that, while Orion was the most familiar with the project, even he would not be able to recreate it, should he fall into enemy hands again. No scientist who worked on the project could. Of course, to Sarah and Casey's disappointment, most of the missions Beckman sent just the two of them on ended up being dead ends, false leads, or just too late to save their assets, and three of the Intersect scientists had already turned up dead or incapacitated.

Sarah knew the signs of a cleaning job when she saw them. Someone was trying to erase all links back to the project. And Chuck was the last.

Every now and then, though, things were going wrong, and not like they had with the first Intersect, when Chuck simply misinterpreted the facts or repeated bad intel that had been fed into the Intersect before he'd even seen it. His mood swings were worse. Migraines had put him out of the field for as many as three days at a time. And no one could tell her if it was because Chuck reuploaded an Intersect a little over 24 hours after the first one came out, or if it was a glitch in the programming, or what.

But his father, Orion, who vanished into a hole and pulled it in behind him just after Ellie's wedding, Orion is Chuck's best hope to figuring it out, and Orion is also probably at the top of the hit list. He shows his face and there will be fireworks, Casey promises.

Beckman had even brightly repeated Chuck's own suggestion, since it had worked so well with Jill: announce Chuck and Sarah's engagement, have a perfectly legitimate reason for his father to visit, and see if he could help shed light on any of it.

And Chuck is refusing, but Beckman is losing patience, and Sarah knows Chuck's trump card.

She also knows it won't be enough.

Sarah was supposed to be at Ellie's tonight because Ellie and Awesome had something important to ask Chuck, something about the baby. Ellie's glowing, freaking out, just as determined and scared about the baby as she was about her wedding, and when she sees Sarah and Chuck together, her eyes get this strange gleam in them and she starts talking about whether Sarah could possibly wear her mother's wedding dress, if Chuck has ever shown her the ring that was passed down from their grandmother.

It's one thing to nod and smile and pretend it's all right to General Beckman through the safety of a video link, but it's another to lie straight to Ellie's face. Sarah can't do it. She has no idea how she'll get through the next week if Beckman demands they put this plan in action. Beckman doesn't care that it'll break Ellie's heart if Chuck and Sarah announce their engagement just to call it off again just as quickly. Beckman wants Orion out of hiding and she'll do anything to get him.

When Sarah is sure Chuck's asleep, she rests her palm flat against the small of his back. Soon after this all began again, she and Chuck had practiced sparring, hand-to-hand, whatever martial art the Intersect could throw at him, but his heart had never been in it. He trusts her. And that's why he doesn't flip over, grabbing her wrist and pinning it over her head, his other hand at her throat, the way she's seen him with other people who threatened him.

She closes her eyes and wishes _she_ had been able to leave it all behind, the night of Ellie's wedding. But she couldn't do it either.

--

"I'm sorry."

Chuck is always the first to apologize, always, because he didn't spend training time having his instincts and impulses drilled out of him, they're all he knows. Sarah sometimes feels sorry for him, something approaching pity, but it's taken her this long to let him see even a glimpse of someone behind the cover. She hates that she managed to so thoroughly fuck things up by letting herself become infatuated with him. She hates that she has no intention of stopping any of this. It was a thousand times simpler with Bryce.

It was a thousand times less satisfying with Bryce because when Chuck puts his arms around her, he puts his arms around _her_. Everything that frustrated Chuck so much about her distance made a relationship with Bryce at once endlessly simple and incredibly shallow, but she'd still managed to fall in love anyway. Her love is destined to flourish in the worst conditions, the worst possible circumstances, she's found. She loves her father, a con man who's never made an honest dollar in his life, and she loves Chuck (damn it), Chuck who is sitting at their briefing table fumbling with a tranq gun, the reluctant spy, the most skilled spy they have, forced to watch as Beckman puts his father in danger again.

While Sarah is sure that if she had actually slept with Cole Barker here in the cells at Castle, the surveillance would have been conveniently lost, she has to be supremely careful to keep her distance from Chuck here, even though it's so damn easy to forget. Chuck's protest to Beckman that they work better together, that their emotional attachment is an asset, would meet only cold silence and marching orders if the true depths of their current relationship were revealed. What they do very quietly in their own bedroom, out of the range of visual surveillance, is up to them, apparently.

Sarah's been unable to shake the growing suspicion that Beckman hasn't separated them only because, sooner or later, she's going to order Sarah to betray Chuck again, knowing that he trusts her all the more because he shares a bed and a life with her. Even if it's a cover life for everyone else.

"I'm sorry." Sarah puts the table between them, although she's aching to touch him. "I know you're frustrated, and you want to help, but we can't risk you."

"But you can risk him," Chuck says, and Sarah glances at him sharply but resignation is beginning to creep into his voice. "Can't we find another way? This puts him out into the open."

Sarah wants to touch him, to put her hand over his, but she's far more sensitive to how Beckman will view the tapes, especially after the 49B. "Don't you think that if he knew about the... side effects you're going through, he would want to help?"

The expression on Chuck's face tells her he's thought about it, but then Casey walks in, takes in their positions and expressions at a glance, and lets out his usual derisive snort. "Briefing in five."

"No," Chuck says to her, as Casey walks over to check the satellite link. "Not with these stakes."

--

Sarah's never thought Beckman was unintelligent, just very stubborn and completely unwilling to brook any argument. Even so, she visibly flinched when Chuck warned her that if she went through with her plan to bring his father in, he would find a way to get to her, causing Casey to bristle and Sarah herself to put a restraining hand on him.

"We're at an impasse, _Agent_ Bartowski," Beckman insisted, leaning forward so that her tiny frame filled the screen. "When you're finished with your little hissy fit, we're still going to bring him in, to find out if he can help us. And if you want to see him, this is a great way for you to do it."

Sarah felt nauseated. Beckman's version of being nice was to say, _Hey, want to see your dad again? Before our interference in his life results in his being shot or kidnapped again?_

At Chuck's glowering silence, Beckman continued. "If your objection is to Agent Walker's involvement in this plan, I can arrange for a new cover relationship for you. I believe Agent Forrest is available."

"For an engagement party?" Chuck burst out, his fist falling on the table. "Yeah, that's not gonna look weird. I mean, what's a two-and-a-half-year cover relationship got on Agent Forrest, who apparently wanted to _blow me up_ when I made the unforgivable mistake of being _kidnapped_."

"It only has to look unsuspicious to the Ring."

"Not to my sister. Or anyone else who knows us. Hey, if the Ring already knows who my dad is, why are we even bothering with this? So that when he's picked up and you guys throw him in a bunker for the next five years, at least I can say, 'Oh, he gave a toast so me and Agent Cylon could really remember our special day'?"

"Bartowski," Casey barked, under his breath.

"No. No," Chuck said, shaking his head. "No. If you're going to do this with my cooperation or without, then you don't have it."

"Very well. Agent Walker, I'll expect to see you at Langley in the morning."

Sarah sucked in a swift breath and Chuck glared at the screen, where Beckman was sitting back with her arms crossed, an unmistakably martial gleam in her eye.

And then everything had gone to hell, and Chuck had tried to trump Beckman by saying that if Sarah was out, he was out too, just to be informed in no uncertain terms, just as Sarah had always known, that the moment he decided to stop maintaining his cover, Chuck was a liability to the agency, and would be taken into custody.

Sarah had never heard Chuck use so much profanity in her life. And then, when it was all over, Casey had stopped them, handing Chuck yet another black velvet box.

"Cubic zirconia this time," Casey said gruffly. "They've cut your fake-engagement budget."

And Chuck had taken the box, visibly angry, but even though Casey wouldn't say it, his expression was just faintly sympathetic. Chuck jammed it in his pocket and walked out without another word.

--

"It's not that I don't want this, you know?" Chuck shifts in his seat, his brow furrowed. "I do. Just not like this. God, not like this. What happens after?"

"What happens immediately after, or what happens once all this is over?" Sarah maneuvers the car smoothly into an opening in the next lane, slamming the car into the next gear, the force sending her back against her seat.

"Do we give the ring back? Say it was too soon?"

Sarah shrugs, and the movement sends another tingle radiating from her breasts down to her spine. She and Chuck haven't yet had the chance for makeup sex, or any kind of sex, and she's very aware of it. Painfully aware. "Probably. The government does not care how your sister feels about our relationship, as long as she buys it."

"I've spent two years telling her that we aren't that serious." Chuck tugs nervously at his tie. He looks damn good in his suit, she has to admit. "Ever since we moved in together she's been... well, you know."

Sarah nods in speechless agreement. Buying her subscriptions to bridal magazines, suggesting possible honeymoon locations. The pregnancy hormones have made Ellie even less subtle. "It'll be okay, Chuck."

"Not this time," he says softly, and the traffic suddenly blurs before Sarah's eyes, because she knows he's right.

--

The restaurant is sleek and contemporary, all angles and starched white tablecloths and blonde wood. Ellie and Devon are waiting at the table, and when Devon stands to greet them but casts a concerned look back at his wife, whose eyes are bright, Sarah knows she has to leave, before they go through with this. She can't do it. She can't lie. She's done so much damn lying. Beckman be damned.

"Maybe we should get some Cristal champagne," Sarah murmurs, and Chuck glances back at her with his own concerned expression. Her safeword for missions.

"I'll be sure to get some after dessert," Chuck replies, and there's something in his expression that she can't quite read. Maybe he's decided that they're going through with this, everything else be damned, that for these few days he's going to take what the agency has offered and enjoy it. But Ellie's grinning so widely that Sarah's afraid her face is going to split in half. Like maybe she knows.

Sarah glances at Devon and is positive he does. With Morgan back in Hawaii, only Devon is on the outside, and she's cautioned Chuck to tell him as little as possible, but that never really seems to work where Chuck's involved. She and Casey have even stopped ordering him to stay in the car. That never worked, either.

The food is great, but expensive, and since the agency is footing the bill for this little farce, Chuck insists that they all order what they want, on him. Kobe beef and oysters Rockefeller. The most superb wine in the cellar, whatever the waiter recommends. But there is no hard edge to it; he's genuinely grateful for all his sister and Devon have done for him, and this is just his way of returning the favor.

Except that the brief duration of their engagement will break Ellie's heart.

Sarah's stomach does a somersault and she grips the edge of the table, her appetite suddenly gone. She's been able to do this for years; why can't she do it now? Why can't she just lose herself in it, beam at Chuck when he gets down on one knee?

Because she's never wanted it, she realizes, staring at her now entirely unappetizing plate. She doesn't want a cubic zirconia ring and false congratulations. She wants Chuck, not _Agent Bartowski_, wants _Chuck_ on one knee with that look of stricken adoration on his face, and when she says yes, she doesn't want it to be for seventy-two hours or his father's capture, whichever comes first.

Her life is a lie. Her entire life is a lie.

Sarah stands and Chuck glances up from the conversation he's having with Devon, about the houses he and Ellie have been checking out, preparing for the little one. "Sorry, I'll be right back," she says, and she has to force herself not to start a flat-out run toward the bathroom. By the time she makes it there she's almost mastered the horrifying impulse to burst into tears. She stares at herself in the mirror, ignoring the pointed stares from the other women crowding at the sink, chattering loudly about their lovers or husbands or children, and then she's alone.

She'll go. She'll sneak out and go back to their apartment, pack everything, and by the time she finishes, she'll know what to do. Maybe she'll intercept Orion, take him to some secure location, explain everything and beg him to see if he can fix Chuck. Or she'll wait for him to get home and they'll turn off the cameras and the bugs and talk, really talk. Something. But she can't do this.

And then Ellie walks in, her dark eyes full of worry, her dress almost disguising the little potbelly, the first obvious sign of her pregnancy. "Sarah," she says in relief, coming over to her, and at least they're alone in the bathroom.

"I'm just so nervous," Sarah carefully blurts out, as Ellie wraps an arm around her.

"About what?"

"I don't know," Sarah apologizes. "I'm so sorry I couldn't come to dinner, last time, I didn't want you and Devon to be upset at Chuck."

"We're not upset with Chuck. He agreed." She gives Sarah a warm, reassuring smile.

"He agreed?"

"He said he'd be Alaina's godfather." She tilts her head. "I know, it sounds like overkill, but the Awesomes insisted, and Chuck lives close to us. And now that you two have settled down, he really seems to have his head straight. I am just so proud of the two of you," Ellie says, giving Sarah a full hug. "There's nothing to be nervous about."

_Chuck will be a godfather,_ Sarah thinks, patting Ellie on the back. Oh yes. Chuck may not have that much family, but those he does...

"So it's all right." Ellie peers at her face, making sure she's back to normal, that her eyes have stopped shimmering. "Come on, I'm gonna see if I can get Chuck to order us cheesecake." She shoots Sarah a quick grin.

--

The thing is that _Ellie_ starts crying before Chuck's even actually on one knee.

And the whole thing is enough of a spectacle to begin with, because their table is near the center of the floor, the soft music has faded away, a waiter is standing at the ready with her bottle of Cristal champagne. And then, because enough people aren't looking, Sarah thinks, embarrassed at how embarrassed she is over something that isn't even real, Ellie lets out a loud sob, and it feels like every single eye in the entire restaurant is on them.

"I love you," Chuck says, his voice shaking just that little bit. He's not doing this for anyone else, this isn't a show for anyone else, only her, just the way she'd always wanted it to be. "I love you so much, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Sarah Walker, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

He opens the box and places it on her palm, and when she glances from his open, honest, mostly terrified gaze to the box, she sees it immediately.

This isn't the cubic zirconia ring Casey handed him at Castle.

This is real.

This is the ring his father gave his mother, just like the charm bracelet Sarah is wearing. This is his family diamond.

She glances back at him, her lips parted a little, her eyes swimming again (damn it), and Chuck nods at her, just slightly.

_This is real._

She has been primed, from the moment General Beckman very calmly and very coldly ordered Chuck to go through with this, to say yes, to throw her arms around his neck and grin at Devon and Ellie, to fan her fingers and watch the light refract off their cover ring, their cover lives. She has been primed because she is an agent and that is what agents do, and she had never so desperately wanted to walk out of a situation before it got this far.

But this is real. This is none of Beckman's business, what's happening here at this table tonight. This is Chuck Bartowski on one knee, his gaze begging her to understand. If he had to do this, he was going to do it his way.

She nods, once. "Yes," she whispers, her voice hoarse from the tears, and everyone around them is clapping and cheering and Ellie's throwing herself into Devon's waiting arms and Chuck is vaulting up from the floor, pulling her out of her seat and into his own arms, the ring still tucked in its box and clenched tight in her palm.

_Oh God_, she thinks. _Oh God._

What scares her most is that she didn't have to make herself cry, but when he pulls back and touches her face, his own split wide with a grin, it's already wet.

--

Casey gave them a thumbs-up from the bar as the four of them walked out. It was sarcastic, for Chuck's benefit. And sarcastic for hers. He knows exactly how many ways this can go sideways.

She's always thought the butterflies shouldn't come later.

As soon as the elevator doors are closed Chuck's hand cups over her breast, and Sarah glances up at him in mild shock before she grabs him by the hips, yanking him to her.

He holds his mouth a breath from hers. "It's all real, Sarah, every word of it," he whispers, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Every word."

And she thinks, just before his mouth closes over hers, _fuck them, fuck them for cheapening this, for making me doubt it._

As soon as he locks the apartment door behind them she, in full view of the cameras, backs him against the arm of the couch, then gets down on her knees, the diamond (_this is real_) sparkling from her finger as she deftly unbuttons and unzips his pants, sliding them down his legs. She stands up on her knees and blows lightly against the fabric of his boxers, and he snarls something as he yanks them down, his knees going weak as she clasps him in her fist. He doesn't sit so much as collapse to the arm of the couch, his legs open so she can kneel between them, his pants still at his ankles.

Sarah will be very surprised if she can finish before her cell phone is vibrating with an angry reassignment from General Beckman, if Agent Forrest isn't knocking on the apartment door before she even gets Chuck to the bedroom.

Sarah unclasps her dress with a single twist of her fingers, leaving her naked to the waist. She shimmies her hips, and Chuck's fingertips press against her scalp and she's in her white lace panties, her dress wrapped around her knees, his diamond on her finger and his mother's bracelet on her wrist, nothing else.

"Sarah," he groans, tensing. "God, Sarah."

He's half-bent over her, probably in some hasty well-meaning attempt to block the cameras' view of what she's doing to him, but she pushes him back and his entire body is vibrating with need, his hands desperate as they grope over her, his fingers sinking into her flesh.

Then she pulls back, takes his shoes and socks off, pulls his pants and boxers off, and stands, smoothly pushing her panties down and stepping out of them, leaving her only in her heels. She takes his tie in her hand and he's so eager to follow that she can't stop a smile from twisting her lips.

--

She sucks his fingers, which always seems backward, but she found a long time ago that if she wanted to distract him from _anything_, and she didn't have the time or the privacy to take her shirt off, all she had to do was casually lift one of his hands to her mouth and suck the tip of his thumb. He's remarkably easy to lead around this way only because he trusts her enough to let her.

Even so, with his mouth at the side of her neck and his fingers in her mouth, her knees bent and her legs open wide to him, she feels him tense every time she sucks one into her mouth and pulses against it.

"Chuck," she moans, wrapping her legs around him, and she kisses his palm, her hips writhing against his. Chuck murmurs something that sounds like a curse and gently bites her, his own hips trembling in anticipation.

_What have I done,_ she thinks, watching Chuck arch under her, panting as she thrusts her hips down. As soon as he realizes they aren't using a condom, his eyes snap open, and she pants out his name, spreading her knees and shifting her weight to him.

"Sarah," Chuck whispers, hoarsely, panic on his face, because they've already gone too far.

"I know," she moans. He stops fighting it then, and when he grips her hips, it's to drive her harder against him, not to push her away. He rolls her onto her back and she tips her head back and screams with his thrust, his only thrust, as he spills inside her.

"God," he whispers, as soon as they can speak again, regret on his face. "Oh my God Sarah I'm so sorry, I didn't realize it—"

She puts her palm on his cheek and smiles, far more calmly than she's actually feeling. "It's all right."

"No it isn't." He tries to draw away from her and she just tightens her legs around him, pulling him off-balance, and his weight pins her open under him. "No, we have to go get that pill, and—"

"No we don't," she says, and her vision (damn it) is swimming again, even as she meets Chuck's concerned, panicked gaze. "We can't anyway."

When he opens his mouth again she puts her thumb against his lips, and he flicks his tongue up the pad, their gazes still locked.

"They don't give it to you when you're already pregnant."


	4. a king of infinite space

_Written for the helpthesouth auction on LiveJournal, since wepdiggy bid. Thanks, wepdiggy!_

_This version is edited - you can find the full version at archiveofourown dot org or on LiveJournal._

_Content warning: Adult language and situations._

* * *

**"O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."**

**-Hamlet**

* * *

Chuck can't sleep. He's pretty sure Sarah can't, either; she hates waking up, but some nights, even nights they haven't had sex, she can toss and turn, her knee bumping his leg, hair tangled on the pillow. She sleeps so hard she doesn't move, after missions.

But they aren't talking, and Chuck's afraid if he opens his mouth, whatever he says will be wrong, and everything that's roiling around in his head will come spilling out.

She's pregnant. Sarah Walker is pregnant. With his child.

And they are engaged in a way that, if they act on, will mean her immediate dismissal from the CIA and a new handler for Chuck.

Sarah lets out a frustrated sigh from beside him, burrowing her face into her pillow, and Chuck thinks of earlier, and he tried to block what they were doing, but, Chuck covers his eyes with his palms, Casey will see it on the surveillance. They're doomed anyway.

"What are we going to do," he mumbles, against the heels of his hands.

"What do you—"

Sarah's voice is rusty in the darkness but there's an edge to it, and Chuck uncovers his face immediately, turning to gaze at her. "Not that," he says quickly, touching her shoulder, and her eyes are wary. "I mean how are we going to face Casey in the morning, after... what happened... on the couch."

Which pales to insignificance next to the fact of her pregnancy. She blamed it on the stomach flu and a faulty condom, and he remembered that afternoon, when she described it, the firefight with a band of Chinese arms smugglers, the wound against his upper arm and the gash in her temple and how very gently and slowly they'd made love, on the carpet beside their bed, his hands fisting in her hair, her lips parted like a prayer, their gazes locked the entire time, and it was like everything was new, he had never seen her before, never touched her before, not like this.

And underneath it all, now, Sarah Walker is afraid. Revealing the truth will mean she can no longer protect him; revealing the truth will mean he can no longer protect her.

"Don't worry about that."

"And..."

She slides over on the bed and presses her lips against his, closemouthed, very gently. "It's all right."

Chuck groans, his hand curving around her upper arm, the shock of his skin against hers. His child.

He has never been so scared in his entire life as he is right now.

"They get what they want anyway," he whispers, lips moving against her mouth.

"What?"

"If not us, Ellie and Devon's kid, and if not her, then..." He trails off, stroking her hip. "Sarah, how can we—"

She stops him with another kiss, and he knows she's thought about it, just like he has. They can't do this. Even if they've managed to somehow hide this relationship, he has a feeling that a six-pound baby won't be as easy. She'll never be allowed to stay with him, and if she does, how can they raise a child?

Chuck gives up and slides his leg between Sarah's, sucking her earlobe into his mouth, groaning as she rakes her nails across his shoulder blades.

They have all the time in the world.

They have no time at all.

* * *

Chuck and Sarah have a routine in the mornings. He makes coffee because she doesn't function well without it. They wave hello to the surveillance cameras on their way out the door.

Chuck hears the coffee maker hissing and sputtering to itself in the kitchen as he pops open the medicine cabinet and finds his migraine medication. Explaining to the civilian doctor exactly why he needed them had been tricky, and he can feel another one blooming, brought on by—

Chuck's hand is shaking when he puts the water glass back down and turns his gaze back to their bed, like it was a dream, somehow. His hand drifts up, his fingers absently tracing the back of his neck, the pale scar left after Sarah put the transmitter in.

His baby. His child, drifting in that still-flat belly. All he _knows_ about her is that her name was Jenny in high school and she hates olives and she's good with knives. The few times he's ever flashed on her, he's seen her deadly and ruthless, the only information a sparse file listing her as temporarily assigned to Los Angeles, her cover name.

He doesn't know her birthday or her favorite color. She rubs a hand over her face and the diamond flashes on her finger.

The apartment is so quiet.

Chuck pours Sarah a mug of coffee and wonders if there will ever be a way out.

* * *

He has slipped three times. On the way to Castle, radio tuned to the college station and then entirely ignored, Chuck counts them again.

Four days after the first time they had sex. In the car during a pointless tedious stakeout, too frantic and rushed to dig for his wallet, and Sarah murmuring into his ear that it was all right, she was on the pill, as her hips sank to his, as he tipped his head back, her hair brushing his cheek.

At the Finnish embassy, after the hostage situation, Christmas lights still winking in the perfectly manicured shrubs. Black satin and rhinestones, their mouths open but barely touching, the weight of her, shivering boneless against him as he pinned her against the rough stone. Grateful he was alive, grateful she was still breathing, her mascara tracing an unsteady line down her cheek as she gasped his name, fists tight against his shoulder blades.

The afternoon of the Chinese gun battle.

And now, last night, but that hardly matters anymore.

He tells himself silently that they can get through this, that they have enough time to find a way, before everyone has to know.

He has a mental image of a livid, fire-spitting General Beckman so vivid that his nightmares must have consisted of nothing else.

* * *

They take the back entrance into Castle now, and when Chuck parks his car, he sees Casey perched near the entrance, playing with a cigarette he actually does nothing but flick ash from. Sarah's hand idly rises to smooth her hair, her face turned away from Chuck's line of sight. When Casey sees Chuck, he rolls his eyes, and for an irrational second Chuck feels like a prom date walking in at 3 a.m. to see his girlfriend's father waiting on the couch with a shotgun in his lap. He takes his time fiddling with the radio, locking the car.

"Nice going, Bartowski."

Chuck rubs the back of his neck, fingertips tracing the edge of the scar only he can find. "Is she mad?" he asks, shrugging to indicate their base, the General's certain anger.

Casey glances over at Sarah with the same look of faint disgust on his face, and she takes a deep breath. "Casey's going to sit on the surveillance from our place. For now."

Chuck is so relieved his knees almost go weak. "For now?"

"I... have some leverage."

"What she means is that pretty soon it won't matter if there's video, audio, or anything else," Casey says, tossing his cigarette to the pavement and grinding it in. "This... problem... will be dealt with, or cease to be a problem."

And that's the last Casey says about it, brusquely holding the door for the two of them. Chuck has to fight himself to keep his hand from resting on the small of her back as he walks beside her down the stairs, from sliding into her hair and drawing her to him for a kiss, just to see the look on Casey's face.

Beckman, looking more irritated than usual, appears on the video screen with little fanfare. "We've received intel that the Ring is using Ferek Ishail, a shipping magnate, to bring in drugs to bankroll their operations. Ishail is going to receive wire transfer information tonight during a party at his mansion, outside Malibu. Agent Bartowski will go over surveillance for this mission, to discover exactly how Ishail is getting the information, since the Ring is sure to use some sort of code. Once the method is determined, Agent Walker will go in to intercept the information and we will use it to freeze the assets. Any questions."

In itself, it isn't a question, but Chuck sarcastically raises his hand, blurred by the mostly sleepless night and the migraine pulsing dully in his skull, like a fist into cotton. "The engagement party will be Friday night. You're more than welcome to come."

Beckman's lips thin even more. "Time is of the _essence_, Agent Bartowski."

"So you wanted us to throw dinner mints and pretzels on plates and call it good? Oh, no, General Beckman, we really have to sell this. Ellie's getting a cake and everything. And by Ellie I mean my sister—"

Beckman stabs at something just out of sight with her fingertip and the screen goes black.

"—who is probably the only one convinced by all this," Chuck finishes lamely, trailing off. "Well. And a good day to you too."

Casey immediately goes to a terminal, pulling up blueprints, schematics, photos of known acquaintances. Chuck can feel Sarah's gaze on him, but when he turns she's already halfway to the armory, going over the weapons they'll need.

Chuck sinks down to his seat at the table, puts his forehead against the smooth top and closes his eyes. For the rest of the morning and the afternoon they'll be sitting here, showing him images, writing down the intelligence and strategies he flashes on, and he'll be lucky if he isn't incapacitated before dinner, laid out in a cool dark room, flinching at the reverberation of his own heartbeat.

Sarah walks in with a clipboard, absently pressing her thumb into the diamond of the engagement ring.

That alone makes him smile.

* * *

Three days after they moved in together, all those months ago, Chuck went out with Awesome and Morgan, and Casey came along, Jeff and Lester too, gazing at Casey the entire time like they knew the truth about him. It felt like a bachelor party, and maybe it was; to them he wasn't a bachelor any more, and Awesome and Casey knew the truth, that he'd have to sleep next to Sarah, knowing the entire time that she was untouchable.

That had been before they knew something wasn't quite right with the new Intersect, when the flashes were just insanely vivid, when every new room had it whirring away, calculating exits and plans of escape.

They all drank that night, all drank a lot that night, Morgan because he was leaving, Awesome because it had been a while, Chuck because he hadn't had a good night's sleep in three days and he could not, definitely could not touch Sarah. Even though Awesome was giving him far too much information about how to keep their sex life active even after they were sharing a bed. When Casey had rushed out on some emergency, but gestured for Chuck to stay, he'd felt torn, relieved that he didn't have to go, disappointed that he wasn't going to be able to get out of it. Jeff and Lester were awkwardly flirting with a couple in their forties, suggesting something mildly repellant involving a hot tub and chocolate-dipped strawberries.

Chuck hadn't been sure what was going to happen once he uploaded the new Intersect. Only that it hadn't been like this.

They drank until Chuck wanted to call Sarah, especially when Awesome called Ellie to reassure her that he was fine, they were all fine. Chuck suddenly needed to make sure Sarah understood that if he could've, he would have saved Bryce, would have taken his place.

And then he felt gut-twistingly sick at the realization that part of him was glad he'd never be competing with Bryce again. Except in Sarah's head. He started wondering, in the taxi on the way back to his sister's place, if Sarah, while he was training, had ever thought, _Oh, Bryce would have gotten that immediately,_ and—

"We're here, bro."

It was a relief to use the perfectly legitimate excuse that he couldn't see straight, to claim his old bed again. Even so, he wasn't able to sleep; he itched for his games, for something to do, to call Casey and find out what was going down, but the iPhone was suddenly too complicated for his fingers. It took him five tries to get the cab company, and only when they picked up did Chuck realize he had been trying to call Casey.

Not Sarah. Calling Sarah would be a mistake.

The beach was pitch black and deserted; his hand was gray when he glanced down at it. He tripped over a dune, and the Intersect kicked in just long enough to keep him from doing a faceplant, but the maneuver left him on his knees, violently sick. He wrapped his fist around the neck of the wine bottle he'd brought with him and staggered to the shoreline, kicking his shoes off as he went.

She'd been watching him all night, she'd said, that morning, after the night he'd spent trying to figure out what the hell was going on, what exactly Bryce had managed to get him into. This time the questions were different, harder.

Sooner or later something was going to have to change. Twin beds would be a nice start. If he could convince himself that his touch would kill her, that their skin should never meet—

But it had; he could see her so clearly, in his mind's eye, in her t-shirt and panties getting ready for bed, naked save for black satin trimmed in lace. He knew the warmth of her skin, how she had been ready, willing, in that motel in Barstow. When he had the first Intersect still in his head.

Chuck squeezed his eyes shut. If only he didn't know that.

He took another long sip of the wine straight from the bottle, winced, and fell back onto the sand. A few grains stung in the scabbed gash at the back of his neck, where Sarah had put in the transmitter.

The transmitter that, no doubt, explained why she was sitting a few feet away from him on the sand, her knees hugged to her chest. She'd been behind him for so long that he wasn't surprised to see her there, somehow.

"What're you doing here," Chuck murmured, the words thick and slurring off his tongue.

"Keeping an eye on you."

Chuck raised the wine bottle in silent invitation and she gave a half-shake of her head, then shrugged and took it. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand after a long draft and turned her gaze to the sea, the salt wind whipping her hair back from her face.

"Sarah," Chuck breathed, repeating her name a few times. He liked the way it felt rolling around in his mouth. "We can't do this."

Her sigh was so slight it was almost imperceptible, and her gaze wouldn't meet his. "We can't do what."

Chuck propped himself up on his elbows. "God, you're so pretty," he said, and the way her hair rippled was enough to tilt him off balance. "Sarah... if we live together I'm gonna do something... bad."

"No, you won't."

"Do you know why I'm here," he gestured at the entire beach, letting his cheek fall against the sand, "instead of at our place? I knew... I couldn't just let it go."

"Chuck, this arrangement is just temporary—"

"You mean like having this in my head?" he asked, and she frowned. "I can't have a relationship with you like this. Because it would all be lies. And one day I want to know you, really know you. I want to know what your birthday is and what you wanted to be when you grew up and what your favorite song is and what made you decide to join the agency, but when we're like this, I can't know any of that." He closed his eyes. "But the day you can tell me is the day you'll be gone."

He felt something touch his shirt and when his eyes fluttered open, she was lying on the sand beside him, her face turned to his.

"You know how I feel about you."

She pushed her hair out of her face and pressed her lips together, her fingers gently drifting against his, and didn't answer, but he didn't need an answer.

"I know it's going to be so hard—for me, anyway. But if we can't really be together—"

"Chuck," she whispered.

"I'm gonna do everything I can to keep my hands off you."

* * *

It had seemed so important. Chuck has always been painfully aware of who he is (a computer nerd), who he wants to be (hopefully someone with moderately awesome superpowers), and the ever-widening gap between. Now he remembers the first Intersect with something that is almost fond nostalgia; although it had made him into a glorified consultant, thrust him into a life he was repelled and fascinated by, the clean sequence of a flash in that first iteration was almost refreshing, in retrospect.

He has no way to describe or explain the headaches that come with prolonged or intense use, now. A gun battle leaves him so nerve-racked and photosensitive that he can imagine his entire head is filling up with black-tinged blood. His skin is warm and whole and solid when Sarah rubs a reassuring hand against his forearm, but the migraines try to make any touch feel like sledgehammers splintering through bone.

He is not unaware that the Intersect is, at its simplest, a set of hallucinations, that the abilities it gives him are not unlike some elaborate form of schizophrenia, and without Sarah and Casey, Chuck feels that he would have resigned himself to a mental institution a long time ago.

In the cell Chuck is curled in the fetal position, face against the cool pillowcase, arms wrapped around his chest. The only light is from the emergency sign over the door at the end of the corridor. The cell door stands open.

The Intersect picks up on the footsteps far before his ears register them.

So many things that seemed important had faded when Sarah told him that she was pregnant with their child.

He can almost see it, now. He almost has it.

The Intersect has halfheartedly plotted how to use the ledge over the door as a prop in unarmed combat and the quickest route to the exit in case he is outmanned, when Sarah walks in with a glass of water and two pills in her hand. Her face is almost always eerily serene, or at least that's how she imagines it. Sarah Walker always looks like she is struggling to appear impassive, like a single slip in her iron-fisted control will leave her exposed, vulnerable.

Now, he can imagine her radiant with joy, too. He's seen her on the cusp. Their job just doesn't lend itself to that particular emotion often.

"Feeling any better?" Her voice is just above a whisper, and when he doesn't immediately move to take the pills, she puts them down on the table next to him, very gently, and sits down on the edge of his cot. The click of the glass on the table and the squeal of the bed pound through his head.

"There's one picture still bugging me," he says cautiously, because his voice tends to echo just as painfully as anyone else's.

Sarah rubs his back. "Don't worry about it yet. We have time. I'm not leaving for a few hours."

It's cut and dried. The code will be in the serial numbers on the receipt with the jewelry delivery just before the party. Sarah has a lipstick camera and a suitably distracting dress. The key to the code will be a little trickier, but all the intel indicates that it's a standard drop; they need the key if they have any chance at freezing the accounts.

There's no way out of it; he's going to have to watch the surveillance tonight. He'll be lucky if he can move at all tomorrow.

"Sarah," he says, wincing as he turns onto his side. "Be careful tonight, okay."

She nods, a cool palm gently cupping his forehead before she brushes his hair back. "We'll figure this out," she says, her fingertips drawing small circles at his temple. "It's okay."

He meets her gaze and they hold for a second.

He's almost there.

* * *

"Chuck, you really have to come to the hospital." Ellie is stirring a pan of scrambled egg whites at the stove. "We need to get you in the MRI machine."

Sarah had given him a similarly concerned look when she had come home from her mission in a tight turquoise dress with her hair sleek and her lashes invitingly dark and he had only been able to brush the backs of his fingers against her cheek, smiling wanly as she curled close to him.

Chuck has to force his eyes open, to focus on the black coffee in the mug Ellie handed him when he walked in. "I'll be fine."

"I haven't seen you looking this awful in..." She gestures with the wooden spoon. "Since that time Morgan and you spent all night playing that—"

"Grand Theft Auto," Chuck fills in without hearing the rest of it, propping his chin on his hand. "It's just, things have been so busy at work. A good night's sleep is all I need, really."

"Or a vacation." Ellie deftly lifts the toast from the toaster and divides the eggs into portions on the plates. "You and Sarah really need some time together, to just be alone before the wedding planning starts, because, believe me, that is some crazy stuff. You think you're stressed now." She shakes her head and offers him a plate and he concentrates on the weakening belief that his need for food is stronger than the nausea.

"I'm sure you and Devon need a vacation more than Sarah and I do."

Ellie points her fork at him before she picks up her toast and rips it into pieces. "Don't get me started. I've been leaving travel brochures everywhere. Then Devon bought that." Ellie smirks dismissively as she gestures at the workout bench in the corner of the living room.

"Then why don't we surprise them?"

Ellie's dark eyes brighten at that, as she swallows a bite of egg. "I'm sure I could wrangle Devon's schedule at work. But Sarah's?"

"Leave it to me." Chuck forks egg onto the toast and folds it, manages to get through a bite. Maybe he can do this.

By the time Ellie hugs him goodbye and heads for work, Chuck has depleted the small amount of energy he had managed to regain. The drive back to his and Sarah's apartment seems almost insurmountable, but the impulse to stay at Ellie's instead of going back is brief and easily mastered. He has to be there for Sarah, especially now.

And he has some plans to make.

The last dying gleam of sunlight is slanted in thin orange bars on the blinds when the mattress dips, and Chuck opens his eyes to find that his headache is now a dull sore ache, and his fiancee—

Oh, he will never get used to those words.

His fiancee is gazing down at him, concern in her blue eyes, her hair framing her beautiful face. She is as bare to him as she has ever been with that unguarded glance, and he reaches up for her, to touch her cheek. She smiles as soon as his fingertips brush her skin.

"How are you feeling?"

"Only half-dead," he manages, "instead of seven-eighths."

"Let me see if I can get you the rest of the way up to speed." She glances down at her watch. "Meet me at the Wescott in twenty minutes."

"Sarah—"

She puts her finger over his mouth. "Shhhh. Twenty minutes."

He knows what that code means, knows what she's doing, and so he packs a little bag for them, tossing in a nightie he hasn't seen on her before, and throws back a few more aspirin before heading out. During the drive he imagines it: Sarah sauntering into a back entrance, filching a maid uniform from the washing machines or the lockers, bluffing her way into the inner offices to access the computers. Then she'll change into something jaw-dropping and present herself at the front desk, confident and radiating sexuality, rolling over any of the clerk's protests until the room is theirs. Chuck is expecting the tap on the car window, but she's a few minutes later than her initial deadline and it still startles him, when he glances up to see a stunning, fiery redhead in a tasteful low-cut dress, paste jewels gleaming on her fingers, blue eyes sparkling into his.

Sarah. Sarah, who can work miracles with double-stick tape and a smear of vaseline and two minutes with her makeup kit. His gaze can't help but trace the line of her gold necklace down into her cleavage, the way the clerk's almost certainly did.

He rolls down the window and she leans in invitingly, her eyes dancing when he finally manages to drag his gaze up from her breasts.

"We're in."

They have done this once before, on his birthday. He would feel guilty, if not for the visible thrill it gives Sarah to con her way into the lush, obscenely expensive Regal Suite, the suite that's not listed on the online availability chart, the suite that requires access via a special elevator. It's meant for the entourage of movie stars or the honeymoons of royalty, not Chuck and Sarah who share a one-bedroom apartment and shop at discount warehouse stores.

And, once they're inside, the adrenaline has left him feeling almost normal.

The room is amazing. His feet sink into the massive pile carpet, the sleek furniture is spotless, the television is the biggest he's ever been close enough to touch, but the real centerpiece, the real reason he will brave the repercussions to con their way into this room, the reason Sarah is hastily undressing in the middle of the floor, is the pool, lit under a glass awning on their private balcony, just for them. There's a jacuzzi too, but it's that pool, serene and cool in the blistering heat, a handful of scattered yellow petals drifting on its surface, that draws him, and he tosses the bag onto the bed and starts to work on his shirt.

"I brought a suit for you."

Sarah steps out of her panties and stands in the middle of the floor completely naked, save for her jewelry. She takes off the paste rings, leaving her engagement ring on. "Yeah, don't think I'll be needing that."

"Sarah—"

With a wicked grin, sweeping her hair back, she walks out onto the balcony. While there might be a few leering men out there with high-powered binoculars, they're too far away from the closest buildings for this to be as public as it feels to him.

"Come on!" She dips a toe into the water and lets out a delighted squeal.

This is who she is, when she's away from all the surveillance and the lies and the facades. She glances back at him and beckons him with her fingers in a lascivious curl, and then she sits down at the edge, planting her palms behind her as her legs dangle in the water.

His hand keeps trying to sneak modestly between his legs, as Chuck nervously shoves the tumbled pile of his clothes out of the way and walks out after her. She tips her head back, her hair tumbling down, and his gaze goes immediately to the welcoming slope of her bare breasts.

She lets out a soft chuckle. "You are the worst."

"Hey," he protests. "I'm a guy and you are a ridiculously attractive woman. You should be _flattered_." He sits down next to her, hissing at the cool slide of the water against his legs as he dips them in. "And thanks, by the way."

She shrugs and looks away. "Don't mention it."

Chuck clears his throat. "Sarah, do you remember, right after we moved in, when you found me on the beach, and—"

"And you said that if we couldn't really be together that you didn't want to be together," she says. She hunches her shoulders, her arms crossed over her lap, and she still isn't looking at him.

He nods. "I was wrong."

She meets his gaze, then. "But, Chuck—"

"But we are together. And I do know you. You're this amazing, fierce, incredible woman, who puts up with me for some reason—"

Her lips curve up. "Oh, you know. Some reason."

"And maybe I don't know everything about you, but I know the things that matter. Who you _are._ Who you were, isn't important." His fingers brush hers. "Unless, you know, you want to talk about it."

Her smile turns wan. "But we're not together."

He gestures between the two of them, sitting naked at the edge of the pool. "We live together. We have sex a lot— well, as often as we can— and you're going to..." He shrugs, his gaze on her bare stomach. "I kinda think that means we're together."

"Yeah. And you think that we're going to be able to do things together? Actually live here like nothing's changed?"

She's getting angry. She's been angry with him before, but he _hates_ it, hates to be the focus of her rage. "We're here, aren't we? After all those times you told me Beckman would throw a shit fit—"

Sarah pushes herself up and grabs one of the ridiculously fluffy bath towels, wrapping it around herself. Chuck turns, his wet legs cooling quickly out of the water, and watches her walk over to the low table where she left her costume jewelry. She picks up a ring and squeezes the housing, and he sees a tiny red flash deep within the oversized stone. Bug-killer.

"Do you think she doesn't know we're here? That she doesn't know what we've been doing all this time?"

"Then what's the problem? Isn't that good?"

She walks back to the pool, stripping off the towel, tossing it onto one of the lounge chairs. Her face is pale. She's never been particularly good at this.

"It's not like she's said anything, right? I mean, I thought you said that if she knew, after all that stuff with the 49B, that she'd reassign us both or something—"

Sarah takes a breath and slips off the edge and into the water, and he follows, glad to finally be entirely out of sight of anyone who may be watching. The water is deep; on his toes, his chin is barely above the water.

"Sarah. Talk to me."

She turns to him and her cheeks are flushed high, her eyes bright blue in comparison. "I'm not good at that part."

"I know."

He catches her waist under the water and draws her to him, and she comes willingly. She feels different under the water, not quite slippery, but her legs come up easily to wrap around his waist and she presses her lips just behind his earlobe.

"What will they do, when they know?"

She shakes her head. "Reassign me."

"But—"

"You know that."

"How can they do that if you're going to have my child?"

"How on earth can I be your impartial handler if I'm the mother of your child?"

"But... if you weren't my handler..."

"I wouldn't be in L.A. I'd be inciting coups, smuggling secrets, infiltrating enemy groups."

"But what if you weren't."

"What are you saying, Chuck?" She leans back to gaze at his face.

"I mean... is being a spy all you ever, ever wanted? Everything you ever wanted to do? What would you do if you weren't?"

"You saying you want me to quit my job?" He'd think she was angry, if not for that look in her eye. "What would you do if you weren't a spy?"

"I asked you first. And technically I'm not a spy."

She sticks her tongue out at him and without thinking he ducks in and kisses her, for the first time in what feels like years, even though it's probably only been a day. The headaches make everything blur together into florid color and fluid time. She slides her hand into his hair and kisses him back hard, her spine arching to push her hips against him in premature anticipation, and when he pulls back her lips are a glistening red.

"I wanted adventures," she admits, and she looks almost embarrassed again, her voice soft. "I wanted to be with my dad, and I thought that if I was a very, very good girl he would come back for me. And then I thought that if I was the best con artist he'd ever seen, he would come back for me. The CIA took me in, when he went away. They made me feel like I wasn't a terrible person anymore."

"Anymore?" he says, unable to help himself, but she shakes her head.

"I... Chuck, this? Us? I never, before, never ever wanted this. Never wanted the whole wedding dress and kids and picket fence thing."

"And if I didn't have this, I'd be fixing computers for eleven bucks an hour, applying for the assistant manager job and sabotaging myself during the interview, and probably drunk-dialing Jill every weekend and wishing I could meet a girl even a third as hot as you."

She chuckles, shaking her head. "So we're all the better now, right? So why do I feel like time's running out?"

"I don't know. It's not like Beckman could stop us from getting married—"

Sarah shakes her head. "She would."

"So you're saying she'll look the other way as long as all we're doing is having sex. Which makes no sense, by the way."

She loosens her legs and moves away from him, her gaze downcast again. She clutches the rail along the pool's side and he follows, unable to look away from her face. She looks almost ashamed.

"When we first met, when I was trying to figure out if you still had the intersect, there were two ways to do it," she says. "Seduce you and get you to tell me, or tell you the truth."

"But you told me the truth."

She nods, slowly. "But you trust me, now. You'd trust me with your life."

Chuck nods, feeling like ice water is surging in his stomach. "What are you saying."

"That Beckman knows and one day she's going to ask me to persuade you to do something. It's the Hail Mary, it's a one-shot, but it's an incredibly powerful one-shot, and when the agent—" it hasn't escaped him that she's shifted to third person, taking herself out of it— "is good enough, the mark isn't even aware of that first little nudge, the second, the third."

"She's okay with us being together because she can use it."

Sarah starts to nod. "Because she thinks she can use it," she corrects him. "And if I tell her no, she knows I'm compromised, really compromised, and it's over."

"A con within a con."

"Yeah."

He shakes his head. "You would have done that?"

"I have done it," she admits. "Not to you, but I have. Chuck, I _never_ wanted to fall in love with you."

"I know—"

"You don't understand," she insists. The tips of her hair are wet and the reflection from the lights glances over her cheeks, the line of her jaw. "Everything would be so much easier. I was _stronger_ before this. Before us."

"And you were so happy."

She shakes her head. "I was _never_ this happy. And I never had so much to lose."

"We're not going to lose this."

She puts her arms around his neck again. "Even if I quit right now, Chuck, they'll never let you go. And for as long as you're here, I can't leave you."

"Of course they'll let me go."

"Oh, Chuck. As long as you have the intersect, you're theirs."

"But if I quit—"

"If you try to quit they'll kill you."

He goes still, then. His throat is tight.

He can't do this.

He has to do this.

"Will it be you?" He can't stop himself from asking.

"I don't think so."

"Well, there's that."

On his back he can see the stars. Under the water he can hear the water lapping against the sides of the pool and imagines he can hear the slow beating of his heart, the swish of her feet as they flutter in the water.

He hasn't said anything about the baby, not since she mentioned it. Not really. He was just getting used to the idea of being an uncle. Sarah with a baby. Sarah with a child and a station wagon.

When they were living in the suburbs for that brief few days, it had felt like a joke. Not enough time to grumble over toilet seats or nail clippings or drinking out of the carton, no fighting over stealing the covers or a late notice on a bill or who was going to pick up the drycleaning. They had still been on eggshells. He wasn't alone with her enough to feel any other way. Not yet.

The thought of Jack Burton makes Chuck uneasy with the idea of Sarah in an apron, bending over the stove. Like a wild tiger in a fenced backyard. It would only be so long before she would ache to escape.

She had never wanted this kind of life.

Never before, anyway.

"Sarah?"

"Hmm?"

"What do you think we should do?"

She sighs. "You don't want to leave your family, do you."

"Would you?"

"I'm used to thinking that the only thing I can't afford to lose is myself. What I want hasn't ever been a part of the equation."

The intersect is trying to find patterns in the stars. He closes his eyes and that dizzying feeling doesn't entirely go away.

Chuck pushes his legs down and stands again. "I'm sorry about not telling you about the ring. I didn't mean to spring that on you, and I know this is all really sudden—"

She stretches. "I think we're even."

He swallows. "Do you want... this? To get married, have a child?"

Her eyes are wide. "Do you?"

"Sarah—"

She looks down. "Every single instinct I have is telling me that we can't do this. Chuck, I... for a while I didn't want to tell you."

He nods a little, stiffly. He's suddenly cold. "That's what Casey meant. That it would be taken care of."

She rubs her face with her hands and he can hear the slightest tremble in her voice. "I'm so sorry."

It takes him a long time to speak through the lump in his throat. "Are you still thinking about that?"

"It would end us. Wouldn't it."

He nods. "Yeah. It would."

She has to work to put a calm expression back on her face. He's never really seen her as someone who wasn't lonely, closed in on herself, almost unreachable, despite everything, but in that moment her face tells her everything he's never even tried to ask.

"Stop it."

"What?"

He grabs her wrists. "Even if I'm not good for anything else, Sarah, you have to be _honest_ with me."

"I'm so fucking _scared,_" she says, and her face was already wet but then a tear streaks down her cheek. "If I stay with CIA then I lose you and if I stay with you I lose everything else, and if I lose you, I..."

He pulls her close and she's shaking, her face wet against his wet shoulder. "I just wanted us to be able to relax for a few hours, and look at us."

"How much longer will the battery in that bug killer hold out?"

"We've got plenty of time."

"Then come on."

They shower and she walks out barefooted in the cream silk nightie he brought for her, her hair damp, to see him sitting on the bed waiting for her. She steps between his knees and gazes down at him as he rests his hands on her hips.

"This is all I've ever wanted," he tells her, his gaze locked on hers. "You, a life with you. If you want that then I'll move heaven and earth to be with you."

"If."

He smiles but it's only in reaction to the faint smile on her face. He feels breathless. "But if you don't, you have to tell me now, because there won't be any coming back from this."

"Back from what?"

He shakes his head. "I'm not telling you. You're a terrible liar."

"I am _not_. A terrible liar." She folds her arms. "I'm a spy. I'm a great liar."

"Sure. You're a great liar. You just suck at lying to me."

She shoves him and he falls onto his back, and despite his impatience, despite his fear, he can't help but tighten his grip on her hips as she climbs over him, the gown sliding forward, the hem pooling over his belly as her damp hair falls against his cheeks.

"I'm a fantastic liar."

"Then tell me you don't love me."

Her gaze falls on his mouth. and her lips quiver as he slides the nightie up, until she's practically naked again. "Shut up," she whispers, and when she kisses him he trails his fingers up her spine to the back of her neck and she lowers herself to him, her knees spread and her breasts against his chest.

"Sarah, stay with me. Promise you'll stay with me."

She kisses his earlobe. "You've never understood that I'll never be able to walk away from you."

He closes his eyes. "We have to find my dad. Just us."

She freezes. "Is it getting worse?"

He chuckles, mirthlessly. "I have three missions left in me, maybe four. Then Beckman won't have to worry about this."

She touches his cheek and he can feel her concerned gaze on his face before he even opens his eyes. "Have you been to the hospital? Talked to Ellie?"

"If Ellie did a scan like she wants, she'd have me on the table the same day. You know that. And if we bring Dad in and he's killed like the others, that's it. It's over. And I wouldn't mind so much—"

She squeezes his shoulder. "Don't you say that," she whispers, almost hisses. "Don't you dare say that."

"Okay." He pushes himself up and she sits on his lap, obediently lifting her arms as he gathers the gown and pulls it over her head. "I got a nosebleed after the last one and the pain hasn't really gone away."

Then he looks up at her and doesn't say anything.

"Chuck—"

"I don't want you to stay because you feel bad or guilty or anything. I uploaded the intersect. It was my choice."

"Then we'll find your dad. He'll find a way to fix this."

"If he can—"

"He will." Her voice is low and fierce.

"I don't know what happens after that. I... we'll see."

"We'll be together."

He nods. "We'll be together."

Then he flips her onto her side, gently, and starts with his mouth on hers, her palm cupping his jaw, and she pushes against him, strains, her leg sliding over him to wrap around his waist and draw her to him. He trails kisses down her neck, her collarbone, and she arches. She lets out a soft moan and he pulls back, drawing a breath to tell her to stop, before he remembers.

"We don't have to be quiet."

She nods, running her hand through his hair. "We don't have to be quiet," she agrees, smiling, and her cheeks are already a little flushed.

After, his headache has gone from a pulse just behind his eyebrows, a copper taste at the back of his tongue, to a cleaver through his scalp, as his heartbeat echoes between them. He pants his breath back as her legs go loose around him, the soles of her feet sliding against his hips.

He goes boneless and falls to his knees on the floor, and she slides with him, her hair a tangle down her back, her cheeks flushed.

She whispers his name and kisses him, and he can still taste her on his tongue. She slides her arms around his neck and when she pulls back, he sees blood on her upper lip.

"Sarah—"

Her gaze falls to his mouth. "Oh God," she whispers, and as he touches her lip, she swipes under his nose and shows him her fingertips.

Blood.

"I think you'd better tell me what you're planning," she says. "Before I lose it."


End file.
